Lady Lazarus
by Ianuaria
Summary: A little look at Addison's life, loosely based on 'Lady Lazarus' by Sylvia Plath. Mentions of suicide, sexual assault and depression.


**_Please read the note at the end!_**

* * *

 ** _Dying_**

 ** _Is an art, like everything else._**

 ** _I do it exceptionally well._**

 ** _I do it so it feels like hell._**

 ** _I do it so it feels real._**

* * *

 ** _._**

 ** _I guess you could say I've a call._**

 ** _Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman._**

 ** _The first time it happened it was an accident._**

 ** _._**

It was, it was an accident. She didn't mean to. She was being good really she was , she was sitting really quiet and doing her sums like she was supposed to do but her pencil broke and she meant to knock but she forgot.

She forgot to knock and the secretary named Rachelle shrieked really loud and the Captain was angry.

So angry.

And then he said he was sorry too, he rubbed the stinging pink on her cheek and said he was sorry. And _really,Addison you should knock._

And _what do we say to Bizzy now?_ in a big fake-happy voice and she swallowed hard and said _we went to get ice cream_ in a big-girl voice.

She's a big girl now. She's not a little crying baby anymore.

* * *

 ** _._**

 ** _The second time I meant to last it out and not come back at all._**

 ** _I rocked shut as a seashell._**

 ** _They had to call and call._**

 ** _And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls._**

 ** _._**

She can hear high screams, like her own, her throat still burns from screamingsso it can't be her. Someone else is screaming and rocking her, shaking her.

 _Addie, Addie, look at me._

She's not Addie, Addie was put away a long time ago. She's a big girl now.

Big girls should know better.

Her throat hurts and her body hurts and she tastes salt and copper on her tongue and it's cold, so cold.

 _Addie can you hear me._

Savvy? Oh. Twentieth birthday, shots of something vile and far too strong. Big hands and strong arms. Low voice. Fingers pressing at her throat.

Savvy is shaking her. Doesn't she know it hurts?

It hurts so much. She can still feel him against her, inside her, breaking something inside of her she didn't even know she had.

 _Addie please. Look at me._

She does. She's not a big girl anymore. She's a woman. Girls are innocent, carefree.

She's a woman.

* * *

 ** _._**

 ** _I am only thirty._**

 ** _And like the cat I have nine times to die._**

 ** _This is Number Three._**

 ** _What a trash to annihilate each decade._**

 ** _._**

She can't believe him. Can. Not.

 _For me, Kitten_ he says and her flesh crawls. She's done too much for him already.

Told too many lies. Buried so many secrets inside herself she feels like they're all that's inside her. Secrets and lies.

And for what? The one she's been protecting from his indiscretions has never cared for her. Never even allowed herself to be called mother.

She wonders if this new one will let the baby call her mother. If it will have red hair, blue eyes, like her. If it will look like it's blonde botoxed mother.

 _Bizzy could never survive the embarrassment_ he pleads, and perversely she imagines her father's lovechild shocking her mother into an early grave. Excellent grounds to refuse the favor he's asking.

She demands to know if the latest conquest has even consented to the procedure and is met by a blank brown stare.

 _I don't want it_ she says before she goes back to the back issues of magazines she stacks in the waiting room.

She looks triumphantly at him before the bleached head pops back up. _The baby_ she clarifies , and just like that she's wrong and he's right.

So she suctions away her father's mistake with rage simmering in her veins. Stabs signatures onto the very paperwork he begged her to avoid to protect the family reputation. She sneered and told him her own reputation came first, since it actually exists.

 _Thank you Kitten_ he says as he helps the already-ex girlfriend hobble out of her practice.

He reels back when she hisses in his face _never to call me that again._

Kitten is dead to him now. She's Dr. Shepherd.

Shepherd. Not Montgomery, she makes sure to tell him.

* * *

 ** _._**

 ** _There is a charge for the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge for the hearing of my heart - It really goes._**

 ** _And there is a charge, a very large charge, for a word or a touch,_**

 ** _or a bit of blood or a piece of my hair or my clothes._**

.

She imagines everyone walking the halls can see the scars on her skin, the marks of her shame.

 _Adulterer_. Her new title. _Whore_.

He husband is gone god knows where, she's here, and all she has now is Mark , this man who pays the price of his oldest friendship for the privilege of spreading her gently open, tasting her deepest secrets and her worst fears and drawing screams from her throat like no one ever has since...but those were different screams. For different reasons.

It's too high a price, she thinks. It'll leave him broke, and he'll seek compensation elsewhere. She won't be enough.

He does; she's nothing if not smart. She doesn't get too attached. At least, that's what she tells herself.

That way it doesn't break her _(too_ _much)_ when she finds unfamiliar panties in the laundry and the wrong shades of red on his shirts and the wrong scent on his skin. It's not like she loved him or anything.

It's okay. She's okay.

AddisonandDerek are gone now. Mark needs to go too.

She's just Addison again, Addison-on-her-own.

 _(except she's not really on her own. He's left a little something behind. Don't ask which 'he'.)_

* * *

 ** _._**

 ** _The pure gold baby_**

 ** _That melts to a shriek._**

 ** _I turn and burn._**

 ** _Do not think I underestimate your great concern._**

 ** _._**

She's been on the other side of this, sure. Doled out antibiotics, painkillers, told terrified women _what to expect_.

This wasn't it. It should be more...momentous, this abrupt ending of an unformed life.

Something more than huddling on cold bathroom tile breathing jerkily through cramps that threaten to cut her in half, more than swallowing pills on the clock, more than this river of blood _(isn't that a lot of blood?)_ , more than the sound of Mark's equally erratic breaths on the other side of the locked door.

He carries her to bed when it's done, strokes cool fingers over her forehead. _It's okay_ he says but no it isn't. _I love you_ he says but no he doesn't. How can he?

Her baby is gone. She killed it.

She's never going to be a mother. That chance is gone.

* * *

.

 ** _It's the theatrical comeback in broad day_**

 ** _To the same place, the same face, the same brute ._**

 ** _._**

He used to do it for her too, she recalls with a dull stab of pain.

Smooth her collar against her neck, linger against her skin. Look at her with his blue eyes soft and warm. Smile.

He does it for her, now, this tiny dirty blonde girl, with her scratchy voice and her naivety.

She clicks towards them on four inch heels, hips swaying, hair curled tight and her chin high.

She sees the exact moment the light fades from his eyes, and she knows it's really, truly, over.

She's not his anyone anymore.

* * *

.

 ** _The peanut-crunching crowd_**

 ** _Shoves in to see_**

 ** _Them unwrap me hand and foot—_**

 ** _The big strip tease._**

 ** _Gentlemen, ladies_**

 ** _These are my hands_**

 ** _My knees._**

 ** _I may be skin and bone,_**

 ** _Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman._**

 ** _._**

They hate her. All of them.

She feels their eyes trail her down green corridors, hears whispers quicken and fade as she approaches.

 _Adulterous bitch_ he calls her in full earshot of anyone who cares to listen. Which would be the entire staff.

They watch her constantly. They huddle around that milquetoast intern. They ignore her orders, shun her department.

 _Amateurs_ she thinks snidely; she hits back hard, closing the gallery during groundbreaking surgeries and taking sadistic pleasure in grinding Karev into the ground.

They've changed tactics; they pry with questions thinly veiled in friendly curiousity.

They're even stupider than she thought if they think they can get anything out of her. She's done giving. There's precious little of her left as it is.

They smile behind her back as they watch her husband stab it. Right between her shoulders, straight to her heart.

She stabs pins into a bulletin board with equal force, hangs a black silk pennant for all to see.

 _I'm sorry I did that_ he says, and he smiles too when his substitute tumbles out of the shower in a cloud of steam. _I feel much better now_ he tells her before he leaves.

But what about her?

She signs his name after her own for the last time on that set of papers, gives the rings a burial at sea.

She tucks him into a box. She's all right now. She's a different person now.

Just Montgomery now. Shepherd is gone.

* * *

.

 ** _Ash, ash—_**

 ** _You poke and stir._**

 ** _Flesh, bone, there is nothing there—_**

 ** _._**

 _What if I had asked you first in med school_ he wants to know.

 _I want to do the wrong thing for once_ he says.

 _I won't hurt you like those other men_ he promises.

But he's too late. There's nothing left of the girl he used to love.

Just this tired used burned out husk that's just as beautiful _( or so they all say)_ and he's disappointed.

He pokes and prods, resorts to tongue and lips and hands to coax something from her, the elusive something he thought she had but she lost a long time ago.

He gives up. So does she.

There are so many ways to do it. Hers is the slowest, a hundred tiny deaths.

She could swallow pills instead or simply walk into the ocean that crashes against the silvery strand of beach and let the sea swallow her up.

Scalpels in the bathtub. Silken scarves and ceiling fans. An empty syringe. A car turning too fast on a picturesque oceanside road.

She would have. Any of them are better than what she's been doing for decades. Faster.

But now she has Henry. His smile calls her back, fills her with sunshine and hope.

She has Jake, Jake who touches her as carefully as a glass doll, healing with loving words and gentle kisses.

So she learns how to live again. Maybe she's a little late. But not too late.

There's still time, time to be Henry's mama and Jake's wife and a million other people.

And it'll have to be enough.

* * *

 ** _Out of the ash_**

 ** _I rise with my red hair_**

 ** _And I eat men like air._**

* * *

 ** _I love you if you actually read the whole thing._**

 ** _I don't know if this made a smidgen of sense to anyone except me._** ** _Based on Sylvia Plath's incredibly beautiful incredibly depressing poem, Lady Lazarus._**

 ** _I always thought Addison was shaped by her cold upbringing and the emotional trauma of her life, and maybe she lost a little bit of herself every time someone took advantage of her, left her alone, or used her._** ** _Hence, this wildly abstract highly confusing piece. No, I wasn't smoking anything illegal when I wrote it. This is what the inside of my head looks like at most times._** ** _The stanzas aren't in the order they appear in the poem; I sorta rearranged them according to my interpretation of how they fit her life._**

 ** _Please review? I'm already embarrassed and paranoid about putting this thing out there. Any and all feedback is, as always, welcome._**


End file.
